Article: Drunken Gambler Bets the Rapture

Do you know what a "tell" is? A Tell is what a pickpocket watches for when he dogs your echoing steps away from the late-night train that just brought you to Grand Central Station. You know, in those moments before you catch sight of your cousin; your street-savvy cousin. You are not street-savvy, and that is why, in your anxiety, you keep reaching your hand into your pocket to make sure your wallet didn't fall out. You are anxious, because you don't want to lose your money. In the Big City, you know you'll need your money. You have three hundred dollars on you, and you never carry that amount of cash.

Touching your pocket is the Tell. And the fellow skulking behind the column now knows where your precious cargo is, because he was waiting for this. You just whipped out a glowing arrow and pointed it there. You have told him at least three things. First, that you are new to the city. Second, that you have valuables. Third, where to find them. How kind of you to offer a stranger such a roadmap!

A tell is what you look for when someone at the table casually drops a Benjamin in the kitty, and says "I'm in." You scan her eyes, squint inscrutably at the backs of her cards, and wonder if you'll be going home broke. Is she bluffing? Can she really beat your full house? You watch her eyes, her hands, her mouth. You are looking for the Tell.

A Tell is an unconscious behavior that betrays the anxiety or unsurety that will only accompany a falsehood. Truth brings an inherent confidence; some call it a "ring." That has the ring of truth. And those of us who have not become intuition-deniers let ourselves be informed by such notions.

For example, some know Bush is a liar because they have chased down as many principal documents as they could find, and have researched the many conflicts in his statements. Some know Bush is lying because they feel it. We arrive at our truths in our own ways, according to how we work, and how we like to work (and of course, what we want to believe).

Bush's Tell? I do believe the man has already shown his hand in this statement: "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order."

This was a lie. (Don't fence with me, junior. There is only one "any time" in creation, and that covers any time. When one does not desire an absolute statement, one uses a statement that is not absolute). But while many of us were accustomed to his lies at that point, there were a fair amount of us who wondered exactly why the man decided to saunter, on the heels of his escape. In other words, why would a thief not only steal your diamonds, but then, dance with your dog on the way out of the den? He had no need to insert that wiretapping phrase in there. Was he simply gloating? Was the boyish tyrant just so very tickled pink that he felt the need to air-guitar a riff of Hendrix after breaking his opponent's back?

"By the way" is Mister Bush's Tell. Oh sure, I wouldn't propose that he lies every time he says it. But used in a certain manner, it almost seems to scream at us to notice. I imagine it a strangled gasp of the conscience, manifesting as a tic that operates spontaneously, and against the agenda of his Lie. The Tell leaps into the light, and just looks plain wrong.

This is why, yesterday, a flag sprung up in the hallowed halls of my memory, when Bush was asked if he felt "that the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism are signs of the apocalypse," and he replied "The answer is -- I haven't really thought of it that way. [Laughter.] Here's how I think of it."

And then, he decided to swing the car around and drive by the bank again: "The first I've heard of that, by the way."

Ah, By the Way. Yes, I see. As Arianna put it so well, "The man is a born again, evangelical Christian whose favorite political philosopher is Jesus, has let it be know that God speaks to -- and through -- him, believes 'in a divine plan that supercedes all human plans'... and he wants us to buy that he's never even heard of, let alone thought about the biblical implications of terrorism in relation to the apocalypse?"

As I said. Some research and reason, some know it because they can tell by looking at the man and trusting the instincts that have allowed them to survive this long.

Except we cannot separate ourselves from the influence of this man, as we would from someone in our normal trajectory, when we disover them to be an untruthful person who presents a danger to the organism of the Self. Because the danger that Mister Danger brings, he brings to the world, entire. Even if he has the sense of humor about him to laugh at such things as this epoch of pre-emptive murder he has heralded forth.

Well. All hope is not lost. Even if the mad warmongering grandson of Prescott Bush feeds a dream of Rapture. We are not part of his divine mandate. And we can vote Democrat in November, and begin the soul-cleansing that this once-proud nation needs so desperately.

And we don't have to worry about them tampering with the voting machines, again. By the way.